When Frederick Douglass' slave mistress began teaching him to read, she changed Douglass' life. When the slave master forced her to stop those lessons, he changed history.
That was the moment the young Douglass discovered just how threatening an educated Black man could be to the white status quo. If words were that dangerous, Douglass figured, they must also be pretty powerful.
The man who became the country's most famous anti-slavery activist spent the rest of his life proving just how right that young slave was.
